Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), a leading customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm and the nation’s largest privately-held agency, announced that it will host a new webinar series in support of its 3^rd annual Financial Services & Insurance Exchange that was held on September 12-13 in Cape Cod. The theme of the event, Connected CRM: The Digital Marketing Value Chain, focused on Merkle’s industry-specific point of view on how the new digital marketing value chain is taking shape; how it impacts financial services and insurance firms; and how to enable the critical strategic capabilities required for connected CRM. The Exchange featured Merkle thought leaders and keynote, Jon Kaplan, managing director, global financial services for Google, who presented on the emerging trends in the digital landscape. The session and conversations from the Exchange will be further illustrated during the three-part webinar series.

The first webinar, entitled Emerging Trends in the Digital Landscape, will take place October 30 at 2:00 p.m. ET. Led by Merkle’s senior vice president and practice leader, John Lee and Jon Kaplan, managing director, global financial services, Google, this session will outline the broad marketing opportunity that connected CRM presents to the financial services and insurance industries and how this is being fueled by the emerging trends in the digitization of media.

The second webinar, entitled Connected CRM and Big Data, will take place November 13 at 2:00 p.m. ET. Led by Matt Mobley, senior vice president, digital marketing technology, this session will focus on the concept of “big data” and how it relates and adds value to the Digital Marketing Value Chain. It will explore the opportunity for marketers to harness the value in big data to create an actionable, real-time view of the consumer across all channels.

On December 11 at 2:00 p.m. ET, the third webinar will be led by John Lee and Megan Pagliuca, vice president and general manager of digital media. This session is entitled Connected CRM Value Creation and will focus on exploring the objectives organizations are pursuing through connected consumer engagement. It will discuss how data, analytics and technologies are allowing marketers to achieve these objectives by leveraging the connected consumer view.

“Industry forces, such as competition, regulatory constraints and economic pressures, have led to an increasingly thorny marketplace for insurance and financial services marketers,” said John Lee, senior vice president and practice leader, Merkle. “Add to that the changing patterns of consumer engagement brought about by the digital age, and the result is the need for a new way to approach the digital marketing value chain. This webinar series will kick-start the insurance and financial marketer’s journey toward building a more customer-centric business strategy through connected CRM.”

Marketers can learn more about the webinar series by visiting the Merkle website or contacting the Merkle events team at events@merkleinc.com.

About Merkle

Merkle, a customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm, is the nation’s largest privately-held agency. For more than 20 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. By combining a complete range of marketing, technical, analytical and creative disciplines, Merkle works with clients to design, execute and evaluate connected CRM programs. With more than 1,500 employees, the privately held corporation is headquartered near Baltimore in Columbia, Maryland with additional offices in Boston; Chicago; Denver; Little Rock; Minneapolis; New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; San Francisco; Hagerstown, MD and Shanghai. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.